Culture Ethos

Inspirational Art
in Provincial
Culture

By Bijaya
Jena

Booker Prize
winning novelist Arvin Adiga wrote "Ignoring the
cultural significance of our smaller towns will
reduce the nation's diversity." I would like to
elaborate on this statement. It is not the
historical importance of these provincial towns
alone which make them invaluable but their
contribution to the nurturing of art and culture
of the society. Very often artists, especially
writers, lack an identity in a city where they are
an outsider and write in a vacuum. Such writings
do not have much depth, as a piece of good writing
is not created in a vacuum.

Most cities have a
metropolitan culture where many people from
different parts of the world reside and adapt a
new way of life, sometimes forgetting their own
indigenous culture. They live in their own cocoons
in a city and are alienated from the society;
whereas in provincial towns, there is a feeling of
brotherhood among the people and a sense of
belonging. This feeling of unity helps to nurture
the local culture and tradition - in USA, it
exists among the Amish community. In India we have
many tribes in different states and mostly they
live in the villages and in smaller
towns.

Such tribes believe in
the age-old native intelligence of protecting
their environment by worshipping the nature - the
mountains, the ecosystem, the rivers. In spite of
the 21st century scientific progress, the tribes
retain their culture. It is interesting to see
them talking on the cell phones but maintaining
their cultural roots. This diversity is the
premise of good literature, music, folk dance,
folk art.

Most of literature has
references of childhood memories of the writers or
the provincial towns they grew up in. V.S.
Naipaul's work has reference to Trinidad.
Tolstoy's Anna is a girl from the province and
Levin's character dreamt of managing his own
estate and hospital in the countryside. Gabriel
Garcia Marquez's most famous novel, One Hundred
Years of Solitude, is again set in a small town
and its atmosphere creates magic
realism.

In the 19th and 20th
century most of the great authors have written
about their own experiences of their provincial
culture or about the horrors of the war.
Annihilation of war or repression of a regime
sometimes triggers oneʼs creativity but the
alienation of a city does not. In developing
countries, most migrants from the countryside feel
a sense of alienation in the big cities. And so
their literature has beautiful words but the
characters are hollow and forgettable.

Now that the world has
become smaller with easy transport and instant
communication, every city in the world looks the
same. For this reason the government should retain
the unique culture of its smaller towns and
patronize its art and culture and help to create
great artistes like Tolstoy, Marquez, Salvador
Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca. Buñuel was
born in Calanda, a small town in the province of
Teruel. He would later describe his birthplace by
saying that in Calanda, "the Middle Ages lasted
until World War I." And perhaps that was a
blessing in disguise.

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The article first
appeared in Huffington Post and has been
reproduced with special permission by the
author-actor-director.